


The Longer Game

by persephone20



Series: musings of TVD season three [2]
Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Missing Scene, TVD episode: 'The Reckoning', story stubs that have never gone anywhere but need a home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-17
Updated: 2011-10-17
Packaged: 2017-10-24 17:03:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/265836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephone20/pseuds/persephone20
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one ever thought about how Damon would feel about missing Stefan's last moments of humanity. Spoilers for the end of season 3, episode 5.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Longer Game

_"I watched it happen."_

In that moment, watching Elena, Damon feels his face go slack. Something in his eye changes. Elena doesn't notice, too much in shock of what she herself has experienced this day to reach out and think of how it would hit Damon to hear this news.

One hundred and fifty years. Damon had promised his brother an eternity of torment but this last year in Mystic Falls has been the closest he's felt to home since Katherine came into their lives. The closest to Stefan. And yes, Elena is a part of that. So much of it wouldn't have been possible without Damon's developing feelings towards her.

But he doesn't know how to comfort her now.

In his mind, he envisages a long, drawn out future, long after Elena's dead, where his brother wants nothing to do with Damon. He stays tied to Klaus and the only information Damon picks up is what crops up in television broad casts and newspaper prints. Any attempts to re-enter Stefan's life will be futile, or else so filled with pain -both physical and mental- that Damon won't attempt to establish contact with him again for another decade or two.

Klaus chose the better torment in keeping to his word, in keeping Damon alive tonight. Klaus always had a way with the longer game.

Elena keeps talking. Damon wonders if it will take another hundred years before the hollowness spreading in his chest goes away again. He could turn it off, but Elena's already watched one man in her life do that tonight. He won't do that to her.

Then Stefan walks in, and Damon gets a front row view of the show Elena's described. The man walking into the Salvatore boarding house could have been Damon from a year ago. He doesn't attempt violence, doesn't need to. No, it's worse. The way he addresses them shows Damon's drive towards posturing for exactly what it always has been: proving that he can be as badass as everyone says.

_"From now on, you are under my protection."_

He doesn't care. Damon searches for the tell-tale sign in his eyes, his posture, anything that he can hold onto himself, if not share with Elena too. But there is nothing. Klaus has compelled Stefan to give up his humanity.

He didn't feel this when he watched Andrea Star murdered. Nothing, since Klaus stole his brother, has made him feel so cold.


End file.
